This study investigated the relationship between students self-reported perceptions of their learning experiences and outcomes on measures of oral fluency, grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation, communicative ability and cognitive ability. Specifically, the study analyzed the correlation between activities in the classroom, in the social realm, and in the home environments with outcomes from measures Spanish acquisition. In addition, diary analysis was conducted to investigate which environment seemed most relevant to the learners during the semester.
The participants in this study were 37 college students learning Spanish in two contexts: at home (AH) in a university in Colorado, and study abroad (SA) in Alicante, Spain. The results of four companion studies that investigated linguistic gain were correlated with the student perception scores produced through diary analysis. These analyses were conducted in order to understand relationships between students reports of their activities during the semester and changes in their overall Spanish acquisition.
The results indicated that differences existed between the AH and SA groups in terms of which environment seemed to be most relevant. While the AH group discussed classroom activities to the greatest extent, the SA group talked most about their experiences with Spanish in the social environment. In addition, while several measures of fluency, grammatical ability, and vocabulary acquisition were related to the home and social environments for the SA group, the AH group data showed relationships between the classroom environment and those measures. Very few relationships were noted between communicative ability, vocabulary and cognitive measures and the perception scores. However, two especially noteworthy relationships were found. For the AH group, the positive classroom environment was related to better attention control, and the negative classroom environment was related to reduced ability to control attention in the target language.
It was concluded that differences between the two contexts were evident. While the AH learners were minimally exposed to native speakers outside the classroom, the SA group enjoyed a great deal of exposure. This contact, however, was generally only related to gains in their ability to communicate orally, and may have actually negatively affected learners ability to produce grammatical forms.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-12072004-075125 |
| Date | 31 January 2005 |
| Creators | O'Donnell, Kathleen |
| Contributors | Dan Dewey, Barbara Freed, Richard Donato, Bobby Chamberlain |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-12072004-075125/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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